


The Buttercup Café

by elder-flower (elder_flower)



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: (just like real life), Alternate Universe - Modern Witchers (The Witcher), Fluff, M/M, No regerts, because there just aren't enough of those, bi Geralt, bi jaskier, coffee shop AU, everyone is bi, everything I write is fluff, geralt does witchering, jaskier runs the coffee shop, just the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29078364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elder_flower/pseuds/elder-flower
Summary: Jaskier is finally doing whathewants to do with his life, working to make his beloved café a success and hopefully start sharing his music with the world again sometime soon. When a blood-soaked witcher collapses outside the café, he finds he’s gained a new friend who fits surprisingly comfortably into his new life. He’s happy, really he is – but he’d be even happier if maybe they could be more than just friends someday. Shame a powerful, destiny-touched witcher with an indefinite lifespan is so unlikely to be interested in a romance with a normal, boring human. Although… Geralt of Rivia probably doesn’t steal horses for just anyone, right?
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 22
Kudos: 46





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> OH MY DAYS  
> Welcome to the start of a ludicrous, fluffy, unnecessarily long, absolutely unashamedly self-indulgent nothing happens AU that I am writing purely to soothe my own soul during dark times and posting on the off-chance that a few other people enjoy it too! 
> 
> The title is liable to change if and when I think of a good one. There should be a new chapter each week, and I'm planning on there being ten in total, but I don't guarantee either of those things, because I know and accept who I am, as a fic writer and a person.

Jaskier first met Geralt when, only a few weeks after he had finally opened his beloved coffee shop, the Buttercup Café, Geralt came along and collapsed against the front of it dramatically.

Jaskier hurriedly slammed down the tray of drinks he was carrying, spilling lattes and earl grey tea all over an empty table and chairs, and rushed out of the door to the white-haired stranger who was smearing blood down his front window as he slid slowly toward the ground.

“Hey! Hey, are you alright? Uh, um, stupid question, obviously you’re very much not alright, what with all the blood and the, the falling to the ground, um, right, okay, okay, let’s get you inside…” 

The man’s face was tipped down, and he didn’t respond to Jaskier’s presence or his awkward, slightly terrified chatter, but when Jaskier crouched down and reached out for him, attempting to lift him to something resembling a standing position, he looked up with a sudden, rapid and precise movement, his eyes finding Jaskier’s in an instant, and stared at him with strange gold eyes that were so intense his gaze could only be called a glare.

“Hi!” Jaskier said, aware that his tone was inappropriately bright for the situation. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, I’m going to bring you inside and we’ll get you some help, alright?”

The man attempted to speak, but the sound he made was much more of a grunt than a word. He frowned, and those gold eyes left Jaskier and moved around rapidly, apparently taking in his surroundings, and then he shifted in Jaskier’s arms and tried again.

“Very… comforting,” he said, and the fact that he was capable of sarcasm when he was bleeding, quite possibly to actual death, was enough for Jaskier to decide right then and there that this man was his friend for life, and he was his.

“Hey, I’m better than nothing,” he told him with an effortful huff of laughter – trying to lift this man was no joke. “That’s what all my friends say, anyway. Now I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to try and stand – I can support you a bit once you’re up, but I can’t lift you.”

The man let out another pained grunt that might have been intended to be the word “fine,” and using apparently pretty much just willpower (Jaskier’s support contributing perhaps one percent), he pushed himself to standing, leaning against the café window for a couple of seconds then pushing away from it, swaying quite noticeably.

“Good, good!” Jaskier said, not missing his new friend’s exhausted-looking eye roll at what was admittedly a tone of voice one might use with a small child. “That’s it, lean on me, we just need to get inside and then you can sit down.” He arranged the man’s right arm into a more stable position around his shoulders and took as much of his really very considerable weight as he could, and they slowly, awkwardly made their way inside – thankfully, one of Jaskier’s regular customers, a woman by the name of Jane, was holding the door open for them, so at least he didn’t need to worry about fighting with that.

“Good,” he said again, “we’re in! Now, here, sit yourself down riiight here…” He aimed them at a table next to the wall – it wasn’t the closest to the door, but a chair and the wall would offer more support than the back of a chair alone, and he wasn’t confident in the man’s ability to stay upright.

The stranger dropped heavily into the chair, immediately leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes, draping his arm over the back of the chair as Jaskier tried to be gentle about sliding it from his shoulders.

A small handful of Jaskier’s customers, the ones the ill-fated lattes and teas had originally been meant for, stood up and made their way out of the café as if trying not to be noticed, all clearly aiming for an air of casualness despite their frequent quick and suspicious glances at the newcomer. Jaskier didn’t much care about losing their business – in fact, he only really noticed because he was looking at the man, and the man’s golden eyes opened briefly, focusing instantly on the exiting party as if he had felt them staring at him before closing again as if he had assessed them and found no threat.

It did remind Jaskier that he had a few other customers, though – ones who were either too interested in what was going on to want to leave or who genuinely didn’t mind the blood and mess and general disruption the man had brought in with him.

“Oh, um. Everyone just help yourselves if you want anything else,” he announced, looking around. There were a couple of nods, but mostly he was ignored in favour of either teas, coffees and delicious cakes or the novelty of a man so clearly fresh from a fight with gods knew what.

Jaskier looked back at the man, and wondered whether it had been a winning or a losing fight. To say he looked in a bad way would have been a large understatement. There was just _so much blood_ ; it was everywhere, all over him, streaked through his long white hair and running down over one closed eye; his skin, where it was visible, was desperately pale, which wasn’t surprising if all, or even just most, of that blood belonged to him. (It wasn’t just blood on him either – he also seemed to be covered in some other kind of liquid, bluish black and viscous-looking, and his leather outfit looked to be splattered with… _bits,_ squishy and ragged looking bits of something Jaskier was extremely okay with not knowing what it was.)

Still, he looked quite calm, and he was, well, alive. From the rise and fall of his chest, he seemed to be breathing without difficulty, and although Jaskier could see a few cuts and rapidly forming bruises, there was no obvious source of ongoing blood loss. He reached hesitantly for the man’s arm, pushing his leather glove and sleeve aside to bare his wrist and feel his pulse, more than half expecting to be pushed away angrily. To his surprise he was completely ignored, and the man’s heartbeat was strong and regular, if maybe a little slow.

Jaskier let go and stood back, and considered the sight before him. Assuming all that blood was coming from somewhere, this completely messed up stranger needed more help than he could offer with his passable but rusty first aid skills and the tiny kit he kept under the till.

“Okay, I mean, I don’t think you’re actually dying, which a minute ago I was pretty sure you were, so that’s good, but I’m going to call an ambulance anyway, because I am in no way qualified to fix any injury that can bleed that much…”

The man opened those unusual eyes again, slowly and with less of the urgent alertness of before, and regarded Jaskier as he felt in pocket after pocket of his jeans and apron for his phone – it wasn’t there, because of course it wasn’t. He must have left it behind the counter… But before he could turn to hurry off and find it (or use the café’s landline, whichever he got to first) a leather-gloved hand grabbed his wrist – and far less gently, he might add, than he had grabbed its owner’s a few seconds before.

“Why?” the white-haired man asked in a rasping, tired voice.

Jaskier looked down at him where he was still sitting sideways on the chair, but now leaning towards him rather than back against the wall. Some of the intensity had returned to his eyes, but he also looked deeply confused. Jaskier wondered if he had perhaps hit his head. Or maybe he was just slightly dazed from whatever fight he’d been in and the effort it must have taken to drag himself here while injured.

“Um, well, like I said, I’m really not qualified… I know a bit of first aid, but you’re clearly badly hurt, even though you seem to be, um, stable, and I definitely am _not_ who you want trying to fix you up, and-”

The man shook his head minutely, still staring up at him searchingly.

“No. Why did you bring me in here? I’ve got blood and fucking entrails all over everything.” He raised his eyebrows in another barely noticeable gesture and it honestly looked like he thought Jaskier might not have noticed until he pointed it out, as if he himself didn’t have a considerable amount of blood and what he really fucking hoped wasn’t actual entrails on his shirt and apron and hands.

“I had actually noticed,” he replied, raising his own eyebrows in a far more exaggerated manner. “You collapsed outside my shop, you know, and you were clearly in trouble, and uh, I wanted to help you?” Jaskier was vaguely confused too. He didn’t understand why this man didn’t understand why he was trying to help him.

“Why?” he asked again. “I’m… a witcher?” Again, he spoke sort of like it was a question, like he was tentatively pointing out a reason that Jaskier was wrong.

“I noticed that too?” Jaskier said, echoing his questioning tone. “Well, I mean, I assumed, you know, since you’ve clearly been in some epic fight with something – the rest of us aren’t all that great at surviving that kind of thing, you know? Also you have that, uh, double sword… holder… thing attached to your back, I noticed it when I was, um, pulling on it trying to get you up… Sorry about that… Dead giveaway though.”

The man suddenly looked genuinely panicked for a second – it seemed out of place on a face that would be slightly scary even if it wasn’t smeared with blood (and… stuff) and that Jaskier had so far only seen frowning and glaring.

“No swords?” he said, sitting up straighter though with an obvious wince and looking around as if maybe Jaskier had his swords stashed in the cake cabinet or on top of the coffee machine with the clean cups. “Did I not have my swords with me?”

“Oh, uh, no, sorry, I don’t think you did,” Jaskier said as soothingly as he could when, as far as he was concerned at least, there were more pressing matters at hand and they’d already wasted a lot of potential wound stitching up time. “But can you let me go now? I’ll help you find your swords later, if you like, but I really want to call you an ambulance before… or, okay, you’re not letting go, maybe… uh, maybe someone call an ambulance for this man?” he finished, raising his voice to address whatever customers were still there.

“No need,” the man growled, finally letting go of Jaskier’s wrist with a nod that might have been intended as apologetic. “No need, I’m fine,” he said again, louder and with a glare that, impressively, took in everyone in the café at once. “Really,” he insisted, looking back at Jaskier – his own face must have looked concerned or unconvinced. “We- I heal fast. Only got one serious wound and it’s probably halfway closed by now.” He started to try and stand up, leaving a bloody handprint on the table and gritting his teeth. “I should- need to- get my swords…”

“Will you just bloody well sit down?” Jaskier exclaimed in slight irritation. This guy really didn’t take his health seriously, and that was _not alright_. “Look, you say you’ve got super-fast magic witcher healing-”

“Definitely didn’t say that-”

“-so how long will it be until you’re _completely_ healed up, or at least enough that you’ll actually be ready to be up and about? Honestly?”

“Hmm.” The witcher’s face is apparently collecting hard to read but definitely there expressions; now, on top of the grumpiness that’s been there since Jaskier first saw his face and the confusion that followed, there’s… something else. Resignation, perhaps, to Jaskier’s relentless mother-henning. Well, good. If anyone needs to be bullied into taking care of themselves a bit better it’s _clearly_ him. “Two hours, maybe.”

“Okay, great!” Jaskier enthused with a big smile that went completely ignored. “Then we have a plan, don’t we? You sit here for a couple of hours, then we can go and play hunt the sword. I mean… that… hah, that sounded much more, uh, rude than I thought it would. I meant, then we can go and I’ll help you find your swords.”

“You really want to help me find my swords?” the man asked, squinting up at him with that same look on his face – the one that suggested that one of them was being stupid, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t him, but not certain.

“Yeah, why not?” Jaskier said cheerfully. “I’m closing in just over an hour anyway, and it’s not like I’ve got any other plans this evening. And honestly, it’s pretty clear you’ve had a long day – to put it extremely mildly! You could probably use the help – or at least the company.”

There was a long silence as the man hesitated, but he eventually just nodded his acceptance, leaning tiredly back against the wall again.

“Lovely! You rest up, then, I’ll go and get you something to eat and drink, alright?” He didn’t get an answer, but he was certain that a man in this condition, having had a literal fight with a literal monster, must need to be fed. Even witchers needed to eat and drink – they were pretty much just levelled up humans, right?

A few minutes later, he set down a tray on the witcher’s table, on which he had put a large, plain coffee with milk and some vanilla syrup added to it, a plain scone, a cheese sandwich and slices of a small selection of cakes.

“I’m Jaskier, by the way,” he said quietly, smiling at the witcher as his yellow eyes opened again, slowly this time, the intensity of his gaze lessened even further. “Do you have a name?”

The man exhaled a tired breath of what could almost be called laughter.

“Even witchers have names, _Jaskier_ ,” he said, and Jaskier could have sworn he sounded just the slightest bit amused. He felt somehow slightly victorious at this, as well of at the sound of this intense man’s voice saying his name, like he’d won something that he just knew he’d hold onto closely for a long, long time.

“Er, I do know that, thanks” he said. “I wasn’t literally asking- you know what, never mind. Please would you give me the honour of knowing your name, oh mighty witcher?”

This time there was a definite laugh, although it was small and sounded slightly unwilling.

“Geralt,” the man said as if he was admitting a mildly embarrassing secret. Jaskier felt a bit like he’d won a second small but precious prize.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” he teased. “It’s nice to meet you, Geralt. Now eat up!”

Happy that they’d officially been introduced, he went and busied himself starting all the tasks he’d need to do before he could close the café for the day and go sword hunting with his new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've actually read to the end of this first chapter... Thank you so much! 💞💜💚🧡💙💝 This fic, boring and uninspired as ~~it is~~ I'm worried it might be, means a lot to me, and many, many, oh god so many hours have gone into it already. 
> 
> (Extra love and hellos to dragon_rider, my enabler in all things Geraskier, Geraskefer and Witcher in general!)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier and Geralt get to know each other a little, the millennial way - via text!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhkay, so I'm already being that person I knew I was - you know, the one who literally had chapter two ready from the start but still somehow failed to stick to her own posting timetable of once a week... Anyway.
> 
> This chapter is loooooong, just so, so long. You have been warned. Also, I usually go over everything I write approximately a hundred thousand times before I post it, but there is just too much of this fic for me to have time to re-read each chapter yet again before posting, so if I've missed any errors or, you know, bits that I should have noticed are particularly terrible, I am sorry and I hope it doesn't throw you off too much.
> 
> So then! Y'all ready for not very much to continue happening? Yeah you are.

After that first evening, which had included a relatively simple hunt for two witcher swords (one silver, one steel), more cake and caffeinated beverages, Geralt’s absolute stone-faced insistence on paying Jaskier for said cake and beverages, and Jaskier’s equally absolute (but far friendlier) insistence on giving Geralt his number and getting a promise out of him to ring him the next morning, “just so I know for sure that you’re definitely alright – just to put my mind at ease, okay?” they did, as Jaskier had hoped but not honestly expected, stay in touch.

Geralt didn’t ring him that following day, but he did text, which completely made Jaskier’s day, even though he knew it was a silly, small thing to get so excited about. When Geralt replied to his reply, well, that pretty much made his week. He liked Geralt already, really _liked_ him in a pure, genuine, deep-down, through and through kind of way, and felt close to him, in an odd way, even though they’d known each other no time at all and Geralt was far from the warm and friendly type, at least on the surface. (He suspected Geralt would have to know someone a particularly long time before he would willingly allow anyone to get to know him beyond the surface level anyway; luckily, Jaskier was good at reading people and, more to the point, utterly tenacious when he wanted to be.)

Geralt’s text messages were generally straightforward and contained no unnecessary words. It didn’t bother Jaskier – he had got the feeling from the start that that was just Geralt’s way, and he was fine with it, as well as fine with making up for it with his own abundance of words in both verbal and text form. They sent a couple of messages back and forth each day for a while, nothing particularly in-depth, just chatting or sending pictures of mildly interesting things to each other – well, Jaskier sent pictures, at least.

On the Tuesday after the Saturday they first met, he sent a picture of a cake he was experimenting with.

_Jaskier (Tuesday, 8:32pm)_

_hey how was your day? did you fight anything cool? stay safe! J x_

_Geralt (Tuesday, 8:59pm)_

_Not particularly interesting. Small job, killed four ghouls. They are not cool. No monsters are cool._

_Geralt (Tuesday, 9:02pm)_

_How was your day?_

_Jaskier (Tuesday, 9:12pm)_

_really good! café was busy, and my friend’s looking for a part time job, she’s gonna come work for me for a while! i’m really looking forward to it!_

_Jaskier (Tuesday, 9:14pm)_

_also testing out a new cake! have you ever had a cake with courgette in it before? I bet you haven’t. my sister linked me to the recipe and said i should try it and see if customers go for it. I think she was joking but, I’m doing it! well if this one tastes nice!_

_Jaskier (Tuesday, 9:48pm)_

_it’s done! courgette and chocolate cake. i’ll send a picture, hang on_

_[image attached]_

_Geralt (Tuesday, 9:55pm)_

_I haven’t, but I would. It looks good. Do you bake all your cakes yourself?_

_Jaskier (Tuesday, 10:04pm)_

_thanks! it tastes really good too, I’m almost surprised (should have let it cool more really, but I already tried a bit)_

_and I make most of them myself, but not all. some things I just can’t make to as good a standard as I can get elsewhere. all local suppliers though!_

A few days after that, he found out via their daily text exchange that Geralt loved animals.

_Geralt (Saturday, 9:55am)_

_Rescued any gore-covered mutants yet today? (Do you open the shop at the weekend?)_

_Jaskier (Saturday, 9:57am)_

_hah, it’s a bit early for that yet, one’s due to turn up around lunchtime though_

_Jaskier (Saturday, 9:59am)_

_and of course I open at the weekend! it’s the busiest time!_

_Geralt (Saturday, 10:02am)_

_You don’t seem that busy._

_Jaskier (Saturday, 10:03am)_

_well, okay, not every weekend day is busy. but it’s still early, and I’ve had a few customers already! besides I’ve only been here a couple of months, people don’t know about the café yet_

_Geralt (Saturday, 10:06am)_

_I didn’t know that. Don’t come into town much. Anyway your place is nice, and you seemed to be doing good business the day I was there._

_Jaskier (Saturday, 10:21am)_

_aww thanks Geralt! that’s nice of you to say, and I’m so glad you like it! thought it might be a bit too cute and floral for you hardcore witcher types_

_anyway this girl just came in with the cutest old dog I’ve ever seen in my life_

_Jaskier (Saturday, 10:22am)_

_wait a min I’m gonna ask her if I can take a picture_

_Jaskier (Saturday, 10:26am)_

_here look: [image attached]_

_his name is bernie! bernie!!! can you even believe it? he's the best and I might steal him_

_also do you think I should start keeping some dog treats for when people bring their dogs in?_

_Geralt (Saturday, 10:40am)_

_Don’t steal someone else’s dog. Do not._

_Jaskier (Saturday, 10:41)_

_hard to tell via text but you know I was joking right? I don’t steal (dogs – only money and cars)_

_(and hearts ;) )_

_Geralt (Saturday, 10:41am)_

_But he is adorable. Give him a pat from me. I think having dog treats available in the café is a good idea. I also really like that you allow dogs in. I love animals._

_Geralt (Saturday, 10:42am)_

_And yes, I did assume you were joking._

_Geralt (Saturday, 10:45am)_

_Here’s a picture of my cat. She’s called Roach._

_[image attached]_

_Jaskier (Saturday, 10:53am)_

_OMFG she’s so beautiful! how old is she? what breed is she? did you get her when she was a kitten or was she already grown up? did you get her from a shelter? enquiring minds want to know_

_Jaskier (Saturday, 10:58am)_

_also, I’m sorry in advance if this is rude and I’ve been buying into a made-up stereotype, but I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that cats hate witchers, or are scared of you or something… I take it that’s not true?_

_p.s. what’s your favourite animal? cats? dogs? what other animals do you like?_

_Geralt (Saturday, 11:05am)_

_I found her when I was on a job when she was a kitten. That was seven years ago. The vet I took her to said she might be part Burmese, but obviously there was no way to confirm that, and I certainly didn’t care._

_Geralt (Saturday, 11:08am)_

_Yes, unfortunately it is true, cats hate us. They generally hiss when we’re anywhere near and then run away. Roach is literally the only one I or anyone else I know have ever heard of not to be afraid. I think she may have some slight brain damage – she was freezing cold and badly injured when I found her. Maybe whatever part of her brain sensed we were a threat was affected. It’s just a theory though._

_Geralt (Saturday, 11:10am)_

_I like all animals, I don’t really know how you pick a favourite._

_Geralt (Saturday, 11:12am)_

_I’ve been thinking about it. Horses._

_Jaskier (Saturday, 11:24am)_

_ok got really busy, sorry, talk to you later. but send pics of kitten Roach please J x also tell me, can you ride a horse? also my favourite animal is a hedgehog!_

On the Saturday of the _following_ week, it was exactly two weeks (less a few hours) since Geralt had first appeared, bloody and ever so slightly less than fully conscious, in Jaskier’s life. They had spoken literally every day since then, even if it had been no more than “hi how are you”, but this morning's first message from Geralt was a surprise.

_Geralt (Saturday, 9:48am)_

_Good morning. I’m going to come to the café today, if that’s alright with you._

_Jaskier (Saturday, 9:51am)_

_of course it’s alright with me! how many times have I said you can come in for free tea and cake any time you want? not to mention that it’s an actual business, literally anyone can come in. though I suppose there are some people I would make leave – or attempt to make leave – like neo-nazis or valdo marx_

_Geralt (Saturday, 9:53)_

_Ok, see you in ten minutes then. (But I don’t want anything for free.) Who’s Valdo Marx?_

“Ten minutes!” Jaskier exclaimed out loud. His first instinct was to panic gently, because that wasn’t enough time to get ready. But then he remembered himself – tea, coffee and tasty cake-wise, he was set; he owned a café for fuck’s sake. It was _himself_ he wanted time to get ready, he realised with a little embarrassment. How foolish and vain of him to worry about his appearance. It didn’t matter how he was looking – it was only Geralt (a friend in his mind, yes, but realistically, someone he barely knew). And besides, he made sure he looked at least vaguely respectable every day; nobody wanted to buy coffee from someone who wasn’t at least clean and well groomed, even if he had often been told his clothing choices were “interesting”.

He spent the next ten minutes practically hopping around with impatience and a funny nervous feeling that made his hands just a tiny bit unsteady as he wrapped up bits of cake and made a couple of hot drinks to take away. He also found himself messing with his hair and checking his clothes despite himself. He was glad he’d chosen one of his favourite shirts that morning (bright blue with a vivid red rose print) and his apron was clean, so that was good. His hair… well he couldn’t be entirely sure what it was doing, but at least it was freshly washed.

Despite the panic, though, and the nerves and the excitement and the last-minute checking of his appearance, he managed to continue what he had been doing for two weeks and push away the small, placatory but firm voice in his head that was telling him at regular intervals that he definitely had a crush on Geralt.

And then, seconds before ten minutes was up (he had been checking) the door opened and Geralt appeared in the doorway, looking a little awkward in a way that made him completely endearing and totally cancelled out any intimidating vibes he might be giving off – and also looking absolutely fucking gorgeous. Jaskier’s heartrate spiked noticeably, and his cheeks suddenly felt hot, and he thought “oh, I definitely have a crush on him”. He could practically hear that little voice, that part of him that had managed to escape his two weeks of effective denial, sighing in relieved exasperation.

“Geralt, hi!” he greeted him in a voice even he could tell was just slightly too loud to sound quite normal. Geralt acknowledged him with a nod and an expression that looked like he might be thinking about smiling. Jaskier was already grinning uncontrollably at him, he knew, so… if it was meant to be a smile, at least it was being returned!

“Hi,” Geralt said in a deep but quiet voice when he reached the counter. Jaskier’s smile fell somewhat, and the new realization of his big, massive crush dropped easily to the back of his mind – Geralt seemed genuinely uncomfortable to be there, making tiny abortive movements to turn toward either side as if suspicious of the couple of people sitting at tables drinking tea and chatting quietly.

Jaskier was about to tell him he didn’t have to stay, and apologise for all the messages he had sent pestering him to stop by – he genuinely hadn’t meant to pressure him, and didn’t want him to feel they had to hang out just because he had helped him out a little bit that one time – when he noticed that actually, one of his customers, a youngish man in a blazer who happened to be sitting where he could see the counter and Geralt, was in fact glaring daggers at the witcher’s tall, leather-clad form.

Suddenly a few things fell into place in Jaskier’s head. Geralt’s apparent shyness entering the café; his confusion about being helped the other afternoon (“I’m a witcher,” he’d said in that odd tone of voice, as if making sure Jaskier knew before relaxing too much); his slightly paranoid demeanour right now.

Jaskier knew, intellectually, that people tended to fear and disdain witchers, he just… well, he supposed he hadn’t considered that witchers would be bothered about it, or really that they would even notice. Firstly, he supposed, since he’d never actually met one before this, he’d never witnessed anyone else interacting with them either; secondly, well, he had been told he was naïve, and maybe he was, but he had found it hard to believe anyone would actually treat them badly, even if they feared them somewhat for their strength and abilities – they were vitally important, protecting literally everyone else from things they couldn’t possibly face themselves; surely they deserved civility if not genuine respect?

They were heroes, really, or the closest thing to the fictional heroic ideal that existed in the real world. But looking at Geralt’s cautious manner, his quiet voice, his attempts not to be noticed by anyone except Jaskier, it was clear that he did not expect civility _or_ respect.

All these things occurred to him in a split second, and while he considered causing a scene and immediately throwing the man out for looking at his new friend the wrong way, he decided not to (although he remained perfectly prepared to do so if so much as a comment was made).

“Hi!” he said again. “It’s so good to see you! Are you well? You look good! By which I mean, of course, you look in better shape than when you were last in.”

“I’m fine,” Geralt said. “I just thought I’d come and see you because-”

“Ah ah ah!” Jaskier shushed him. “Go and sit down, you can tell me why over a nice drink. Not that you need a reason, by the way, you’re more than welcome to stop by any time – not only because, as I said in my text, it’s a café and therefore open to all. At least until they misbehave in any way!” he added in a slightly louder voice, though he didn’t check to see whether his potentially witcher-hating customer had heard him.

“You talk even more in real life than I remembered,” Geralt grumbled, but made his way over to the table in the furthest corner and sat, looking somehow sceptical. Jaskier hoped he wasn’t regretting coming, and rushed to make him a drink (an extra hot latte) and grab him something to eat (a slice of the courgette and chocolate cake he was now trialling as a regular product) as if he might walk out if he was left sitting there by himself for longer than a minute or two. He grabbed himself a slice of cake too, and the half-drunk cup of earl grey tea (with just a dash of milk) he already had perching on a shelf behind him, placed everything down just slightly too hard on a tray and took it all with him. He sat down at the table across from Geralt and prodded his mug towards him. Geralt accepted it and the cake with a nondescript noise Jaskier took for thanks and looked at him for a moment. The intensity to his gaze that Jaskier remembered was present again – clearly it was a trait, and not just a product of the circumstances of last time.

“Don’t you need to work?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I can hop up if someone needs something, or if someone else comes in,” Jaskier replied cheerfully. “I want to talk to you while you’re here, obviously, not waste your visit doing some little task that can be done later.”

Geralt took a sip of his latte, not waiting for it to cool even a little bit, and Jaskier thought he could see the potential for a smile in his expression again, small and surprisingly sweet. 

He had forgotten his nerves for a few minutes there, but watching Geralt sipping from a drink he’d made him, hands wrapped around it like he appreciated the warmth, and that little almost-smile – well, Jaskier could _feel_ the attraction he had only just acknowledged growing in strength, and as if his brain had taken it as a reminder, he suddenly felt nervous all over again.

“So you came in for a specific reason, is that right?” He cursed himself for how oddly business like – and unlike him – it came out, but his usually easily accessible words were failing him and it was the best he could do in the moment. Geralt, luckily, either didn’t notice or didn’t care about his sudden awkwardness. He hummed a kind of affirmative noise.

“I wanted to thank you,” he said, not making eye contact.

“Thank me?” Jaskier echoed, confused for a moment, before he recalled how they had met – it seemed somewhat distant now, with two weeks of constant communication between then and now. “Oh, for saving you?”

“You didn’t _save_ me,” Geralt said, making eye contact again and managing to look both irritated and amused. “I was already healing, I would have just… rested there for a while and then been fine.”

“You would have just _rested_ there? You mean, face down on the pavement?” Jaskier couldn’t help but laugh into his tea, and he hoped it didn’t come off as unkind at all. There was something about Geralt that he just found entertaining, but not in a mocking way – no, in a way that was already far too fond.

“Hmm.” Geralt made a grumpy noise that, from someone he knew better, Jaskier would have said was the noise of a person who has no response but doesn’t want to admit they’re being ridiculous. “I would have been fine,” Geralt insisted again.

“I know you would have _survived_ , but that’s not the same as being _fine_ ,” Jaskier insisted in turn. “I saved you – from more discomfort than you needed to suffer, and from the cold- oh, and from hunger and thirst, don’t forget!”

“You did not,” Geralt repeated with what Jaskier was fairly sure was an amused snort. “But… you did help me, and you made it a lot less unpleasant than it could have been. I’m very grateful, and I should have said so much sooner.”

“Geralt!” Jaskier exclaimed, in an overly familiar way, really, for someone who had known him two weeks, but he felt strangely touched. He got the feeling that Geralt did not express his feelings often, and the fact that he had done so, and come here to do it in person, especially when it was so very unnecessary just for having the basic decency to not let him bleed to death outside his café, warmed his heart. “You’re so very welcome, but I hope you know absolutely no thanks were required. I wanted to help you, and honestly, even if I hadn’t wanted to, I would have done anyway, because it was the right thing to do!”

Geralt didn’t reply, just made another noise that could mean anything or nothing, and studied him over his latte.

“What? What is it?” Jaskier demanded when he couldn’t put up with fidgeting under that stare for any longer. His face had gone pink again, he was certain. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You really aren’t bothered that I’m a witcher,” Geralt replied, and it didn’t sound like a question. “You weren’t then, even though I was covered in blood and barely able to stand, and you aren’t now. You’re not… Hmm. Scared.”

He seemed genuinely hesitant to say that last word, and Jaskier saw again how used he must be to being feared – and how much he didn’t want to be.

“No! Of course not!” he protested automatically, then paused and spoke slightly more quietly. “I mean… I don’t mean to make it sound like that’s obvious or anything, when clearly you expected that I would be, and you must have expected that for a reason, so… Um, sorry, I’m going on a bit aren’t I? And probably not making myself particularly clear. What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t mean to sound dismissive, but no, I’m not scared of you.”

“And…” Geralt said, after considering this while eating a bit of cake, “you weren’t aware that you’re supposed to be? That everyone else is?”

“Supposed to be scared of you? I was, I think, kind of. Aware of that, I mean. I knew that you didn’t exactly have, you know, the best reputation – you as in witchers, not you as in _you_ , I’d never heard of _you,_ or of any individual witchers. I just… I think I was stupid, and I assumed that, even though everyone’s always all like ‘ooh scary witchers, they’ve got no feelings, they’ll get you, aaargh’, in real life, nobody would really be all that worried. I mean, perhaps I’m just being naïve, perhaps you’ve actually come here to, I don’t know, to kill me for fun and drink my blood or something.” Jaskier couldn’t help giving him a lopsided grin, just to be extra sure he would know he was joking but also because that irritated but amused look was back on his face, and it shouldn’t have been charming, but it was. “But, assuming you’re not, I…” Suddenly he didn’t feel so light-hearted about the whole thing. “Well, I’m really sorry if people treat you badly,” he said, much more seriously. Geralt looked rather startled, and Jaskier wondered if he was making him uncomfortable, but it felt important to let him know that at least someone was on his side, even if it was someone who talked too much and made things awkward. “You don’t deserve it. People should be grateful for what you do. It’s not like they could do it! Well, maybe some of the more extensively trained martial arts experts might be able to take down a monster or two. If it was a small one. I don’t know. Anyway, you should know that I at least am grateful for you. Gods know I’d be useless if there were creatures running around all over the place and nobody else to fight them! Well, I’d be dead, of course, the ultimate type of useless, but you know what I mean. I mean, for Melitele’s sake, this whole town would be slaughtered if even just one single… one, I don’t know, reanimated skeleton came by to do a bit of mischief!”

Geralt had stopped looking like a deer in headlights, and to Jaskier’s surprise and deep delight, at this point he actually laughed, a short, harsh sound that suited him well.

“A reanimated skeleton?” he said, eyebrows raised.

“Yes! Is that, uh, not a thing?”

“It’s not a thing,” Geralt confirmed. “I suppose, under some very specific circumstances it could be. Generally someone or something needs to have died recently in order to be, uh, ‘reanimated’ successfully…”

“Really? That’s fascinating!” Jaskier commented.

Geralt gave him that searching look again, as if he was trying to tell whether Jaskier meant what he said or not.

“You’re fucking weird,” he concluded eventually.

“I’ll take it,” Jaskier decided, shrugging, because Geralt was _smiling,_ and not just that tiny little potential smile that Jaskier could sense with what felt like no more than instinct, but a real, undeniable (if still small) smile that pulled at one corner of his mouth more than the other. The fact that it made him look even more shockingly attractive was lovely, but the fact that it made him look _happy_ was more to blame for Jaskier’s heartrate tipping upwards again.

“Do you… like the cake?” he asked, mainly because it gave him something to concentrate on for a second that wasn’t just how crazily much he liked this person who he hardly knew at all.

“It’s really good. It’s the one with courgette in it, right?”

“I thought you would like it! Yeah… It’s not been that popular so far, to be honest. I think people see that it has courgette in and get put off straight away, so I briefly considered not putting it on the label, but obviously I absolutely can’t do that for like a hundred reasons, so I might just have to give up on making it popular. I’m going to keep offering it for another week or so, I think, and see how it goes.”

_Boring_ , Jaskier thought to himself. He was being so boring, Geralt killed fucking supernatural creatures for a living, he didn’t care about vegetable cakes and how many people did or did not like them…

And yet, though Geralt’s elusive smile was gone, there he was still sitting, drinking his coffee and looking generally content – at some point, while they’d been chatting, he had lost almost all of the tension he had brought in with him – and nodding as he spoke. _And_ , Jaskier reminded himself, Geralt had replied to all his messages about boring, every day, non-monstery stuff like the weather and his sister’s guinea pigs and his new guitar. Every single one. Maybe he didn’t find him boring. Or maybe he did find him boring, but he _liked_ boring.

“You could try giving it to people for free,” Geralt suggested unexpectedly, looking thoughtful, and Jaskier felt further reassured that he wasn’t boring him to death – Geralt was actually engaged in the conversation, even though it wasn’t terribly interesting – and also stupid for not having thought of that himself. “That way you can at least get opinions on it without first having to convince people to buy it over something they already know they like.”

“You absolute genius!” Jaskier enthused. “That’s a great idea, and I can’t bloody believe I didn’t think of it before!” He took a bite of his own cake. “It _is_ rather good, isn’t it? Mm, yeah, definitely deserves to be eaten by people, even if it means I lose a few quid to begin with…”

After that there was a short silence as they ate and drank. The lack of chatter didn’t seem to bother Geralt at all, and it didn’t feel as strange and uncomfortable to Jaskier as it normally would have, mainly because that fact (and also because he was enjoying spending this precious little bit of time with him so much that they could be doing anything, or nothing, and he would still class it as a good time).

Just as he was trying to decide what topic to bring up next – he was filled to the brim with witchering-related questions, but leaning towards asking about Roach instead, in case Geralt didn’t want to answer questions about his work from someone totally ignorant about it - the door opened and two women with approximately a hundred small children between them came in. He was happy to have customers, as always, but as he got to his feet and brushed cake crumbs off his apron, he couldn’t help but wish they had held off on their desire for tea and cake for a little while longer. Half an hour, perhaps…

“Don’t go anywhere,” he ordered Geralt jokingly, flashing him a slightly regretful smile, then wondered if he had come across too weird, or creepy, or… “I mean, unless you want to,” he added sheepishly, just to make sure he was coming across as weird and creepy.

Geralt made a quiet little grunt (it seemed to Jaskier that was kind of his thing) and put down his mug.

“I have to be going soon anyway. Got a contract to carry out early evening, and it’s a good few hours’ drive away, and there are things I need to prepare. It’s, uh, not that I _want_ to,” Geralt added, which made Jaskier think his disappointment had probably shown on his face, for all he had tried to hide it.

“Oh, that’s totally fine!” he said, trying to focus on the fact that it absolutely _was_ fine – seeing Geralt had been a nice surprise that had already made his day, and of course they both had things to be doing. And of course they would still be in contact. At least, he assumed they would…

“I’ll, uh, text you later?” he offered slightly timidly as he made his way behind the counter, still facing Geralt instead of looking where he was going. “If- if that’s alright?”

Geralt gave him a strange look (that despite being a new one on Jaskier, still involved that already familiar frown) and said, “Why wouldn’t it be?” in a matter-of-fact way that made him feel distinctly better, and put his sudden fear that this was the last they would see or hear of each other straight back to bed.

He tried to concentrate on writing the new customers’ orders in his little notebook, generally being friendly and welcoming and chatting to the kids (who were excited about having cake and extra adorable) but he was pretty sure he wasn’t at his best, since at least half his attention was on Geralt, finishing up his cake and coffee, leaving cash on the counter (definitely seeing Jaskier trying to indicate with a waving arm that he didn’t have to pay and ignoring him deliberately) and making his way out. Jaskier lost track of one of the children’s debate with herself about which was better, a bakewell tart or a slice of lemon and raspberry cake, as Geralt looked briefly back in through the window, directly at him, as he walked away.

What did that mean? Did it mean something?

“Um, oh I’m sorry, did you say you’d decided on the bakewell?” Jaskier asked, forcing himself to forget about taciturn, extremely attractive witchers and focus on hungry, expectant-looking children.

“No, silly!” the child told him seriously. “‘Cause we can get bakewells at home, sometimes, but we never have homemade lemon and raspberry cake! You weren’t listening!” she accused him finally, and Jaskier laughed at the same time as the shorter of the two women said “Jo!” in an aggrieved and slightly embarrassed way.

“It’s fine,” Jaskier told her with a reassuring smile. “You’re right, I wasn’t listening,” he told the girl, equally as seriously as she had explained her baked goods-based logic. “I got distracted, I’m very sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t,” the girl said imperiously, and Jaskier had to fight very hard not to burst into full-on laughter while the two adults at the table looked at each other in surprise and amusement.

“Now where on earth did you learn a phrase like that?” one of them was saying as he finished writing down their order and went back to get started preparing it for them.

As he started doling out slices of cake onto plates and putting teabags to steep, he wondered how it had possibly passed him by until today that he had such an obvious crush on his new friend. Acquaintance. Witcher. Hadn’t he spent the last two weeks lighting up like a slightly anxious sparkler whenever his phone went, just in case it was a message from Geralt? Hadn’t he thought he was the best-looking man he’d seen possibly ever, even when covered in all manner of unspeakable nastiness? Hadn’t he wished for that first strange evening together, searching for discarded, blood-covered swords and then cleaning up the aftermath of Geralt’s dramatic first entrance into his coffee shop, never to end?

And it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to falling for people he met. He was good at finding almost everyone extremely attractive and intriguing in their own ways, and had had periods of intense attraction to probably the majority of his friends. But this… didn’t feel the same, somehow, as he was used to.

There was something special about Geralt. He couldn’t put his finger on what exactly it was, but he felt it so strongly he knew he was right. Something had convinced him that first night that they would be friends forever (or at least he would be a friend to Geralt forever) and he still felt that way. In fact, despite his newly noticed infatuation, he was pretty sure he would genuinely be happy if they were never anything more than that; he just knew with a strange and honestly quite unsettling certainty that he _had_ to be in Geralt’s life, in whatever capacity.

He took the family’s order out to them in a couple of trips, earning him an adorable chorus of small voices thanking him happily, and retreated behind the counter to enjoy his new crush (and agonise over it in equal measure).

After all, it was a lovely feeling, secretly thrilling over the warmth in his chest and the butterflies in his stomach, smiling almost in spite of himself because he just liked this man _so_ _much –_ but at the same time, it was definitely a lost cause. Geralt was, well, he was a lot of things, but among some of the foremost of those things, he was powerful, important, and really stunningly attractive. He was also as good as immortal, if what Jaskier knew about witchers was correct (which at least some of it was), and, if you believed certain stories at least, had literally been “chosen by destiny”.

All in all, then… Decisively out of Jaskier’s league. He pretty much couldn’t imagine someone more unattainable in the romantic sense, and honestly he was a bit surprised Geralt was even interested in the casual sort of friendship they seemed to be arriving at.

There was simply no way someone like Geralt could want a man like Jaskier, even if he was single – and Jaskier couldn’t really imagine that he didn’t already have a partner. Maybe another witcher? It would make sense for him to be with someone who lived the same lifestyle as him, who faced the same dangers, and importantly, would (potentially, at least) live the same long life.

Jaskier lived a very dull life, in comparison to that of a witcher, and knew nothing about what it was like to hunt monsters, except that it was dangerous and, as he knew from his dramatic first meeting with Geralt, disgusting and liable to get you covered in gore. He had no powers, and as much as he enjoyed his life, he knew he wasn’t important – he was unlikely to ever save anyone’s life, let alone save lives every day. He considered himself acceptable to look at, maybe slightly above average on a good day, but in a cute, not particularly noticeable way; nothing at all like Geralt’s eye-catching beauty. And of course he was extremely mortal and bound to die of old age, probably before Geralt looked a single year older than he did right now.

And, of course, he may not have any romantic or sexual interest in men to begin with. A lot of people were a lot pickier about that kind of thing than Jaskier was, after all. 

He sighed, his heart aching in a bittersweet way. He had always loved the romance of, well, romance, even if it was a hopeless one based on not very much and doomed to remain unrequited, like this one. Feelings were the fuel for a musician’s soul, so all feelings were, in one way or another, good, he tended to believe, and he allowed himself to wallow in his gentle heartache just a little bit, fragments of ideas for a song floating around inside him with the butterflies.

(In actual fact, he’d had a great deal of inspiration for songs about Geralt and witchers in general over the last couple of weeks, but hadn’t felt he could just use him as a muse without even letting him know, so it all remained rather vague and unrefined. He had thought perhaps he would ask him if was okay, maybe even get a few monster-related stories out of him to base some more ideas on… Now Geralt had come to see him in real life, voluntarily this time, he felt rather more hopeful that he might agree to the whole thing.)

After his allotted period of sighing to himself and longing for someone he didn’t really even know yet was done, he made himself a strong drink – lots of espresso shots, lots of milk, lots of syrup – and made an effort to get back into a bit more of a work mindset after his extremely nice distraction, doing the little everyday tasks he’d been ignoring; running the dishwasher, making a list of which suppliers he needed to contact and what he needed to bake on what day of the following week and so on.

And then the customer he’d all but forgotten about, the man in the blazer (which didn’t suit him) who had been glaring at Geralt when he was in the shop, came up to pay for his and his companion’s drinks.

Again, Jaskier debated having a go at the man, but decided he would let it go, not wanting to bring any hostility into the atmosphere, especially now there were young children around. The man was leaving anyway, and _technically_ he hadn’t really done anything… He did wonder if he would regret not saying anything later, but contented himself with being cold and completely unfriendly in his manner, which did not come easily to him. The man didn’t seem to notice, and in fact thanked him and smiled so warmly that Jaskier wondered if maybe he had been seeing something that wasn’t there. Maybe he knew Geralt and didn’t like him. Or maybe he had been looking in Geralt’s direction but actually thinking of something else entirely?

But then the man opened his mouth again and Jaskier realised he had been right the first time.

“You know, I saw you with that fellow earlier, the witcher.” The man leaned toward him slightly and adopted a patronizing manner, as if he was some kind of fatherly character offering advice to a young man, though he couldn’t have been any older than Jaskier. “You should be careful, not let, you know, his type in here. And you definitely shouldn’t be trying to make friends with him. Just some friendly advice. They’re dangerous mutants, witchers are.”

“I’m sorry, what exactly has a witcher ever done to you?” Jaskier asked in what was possibly the iciest tone he had ever used with anyone outside his immediate family. “Or to anyone you know?”

“Oh, well, nothing,” the man said airily, not even looking the slightest bit embarrassed to admit it. “Just, they’re not even human, are they? Everyone knows they’re dangerous, right?”

“Right,” Jaskier said, surprised he was managing to sound so calm when his heart was beating ten to the dozen, angry and sad. “I suppose they are dangerous, so strong and well trained, they can even use spells, can’t they?”

The man nodded.

“So it’s a good fucking thing they only kill monsters then, isn’t it?” Jaskier all but hissed at him, and he finally seemed to notice Jaskier wasn’t taking his advice too kindly, looking surprised and taking a small half-step back. “Did you know that _that fellow the witcher_ nearly bled to death a couple of weeks ago fighting a load of _harpies_ that were making a nest just outside town?” Jasker continued, quiet but furious. Okay, so _bled to death_ was a bit of an over-exaggeration, but artistic license was allowed for emphasizing an important point. “So that people like us – including total dicks like you – would stay safe? I let him in here that day to try and save his life, and I don’t regret it, but right now I’m very strongly regretting letting _you_ in. So take your change, and while my friend and ‘his type’ will continue to be very welcome in here, you are not. Please leave.”

The man looked truly affronted, as if he wasn’t the one being a massive fucking bigot, snatched his change from Jaskier’s hand and glared at him.

“Fuck you,” he said loudly. “I was just trying to help by warning you, fuck you!” While Jaskier had managed to keep his voice down enough during his tirade that none of his other customers had noticed them, the man’s swearing was easily loud enough to disturb the peace, and the children at the table by the window looked up with expressions ranging from scandalized and amused at getting to hear a grown-up word to slightly nervous.

“Get out,” Jaskier said again, clear but as calm as he could manage, and thank the gods, the man did, without another word. He had been too focused on their disagreement to notice the woman who had been sharing the man’s table approaching him, but suddenly she was right there, looking slightly nervous with one hand playing with the end of one of her two dark braids.

“Oh, gods, I’m-” _sorry,_ he instinctively wanted to say, for shouting at her companion, but he wasn’t, at all. “Um. I didn’t… I’m afraid I had to…”

“I know, I know, I- I’m sorry about my brother,” she interrupted him. “He’s not _all_ bad but he can be a real arsehole. You were right to tell him off, and to kick him out – it might even do him some good. All that witcher stuff he goes on about is… I don’t know, he believes everything he reads on the internet. I’m hoping he’ll grow out of it but, well, he’s thirty-two, so…”

Jaskier laughed, deeply relieved she was nothing like her brother and wasn’t going to tell him off in return.

“You never know, people can change,” he said optimistically – the guy had been an unmitigated bastard, but almost nobody was past the point where a bit of education couldn’t change their ways, in Jaskier’s opinion. “If he ever does, he can come back. And, uh, you’re still welcome, of course.”

She gave him a sweet smile and left, and Jaskier hurried over to the window table to apologise to the women and their kids.

“That man was being very rude, so I had to tell him off - I’m sorry you had to hear any of that, from either of us,” he explained to the children before turning to the women and offering them all their food and drinks on the house; he was secretly relieved when they politely declined (teasing him that if _he_ had said any “bad words”, it had at least been too quiet for them to hear, so they didn’t the incident as his fault) because, well, two adults and four kids (or was it five? Jaskier thought there might be one playing under the table) ate and drank _a lot,_ and while nothing he sold was particularly pricey, it all added up. He was still a new business, and he needed all the income he could get!

It turned into a relatively busy day, busier than the previous Saturday, which was excellent news, and also forced Jaskier to keep his mind more on work and slightly less on Geralt, although he still caught himself deep enough in daydreams about the witcher to have unwittingly paused mid-task more than once.

He also felt a strong urge to send him texts about anything and everything every five minutes, and started then deleted at least ten messages over the course of the day. Geralt had made it clear he would be travelling this afternoon, and working in the evening, so he wouldn’t have time for their normal chit chat anyway.

He managed to restrict himself to just the one text (well, technically two, but sent one after the other so essentially just the one message), sent mid-afternoon when the café was starting to get less busy.

_Jaskier (Saturday, 3:27pm)_

_hey, hope your journey’s going ok, and good luck w your job tonight. stay safe!_

_ps – it was really nice seeing you this morning_ _🍰_ _☕_ _💙_

Was that second part a bit much? Maybe, he thought as soon as he had sent it, biting his lip. Still, it was true. And he’d sent it now. And besides, it didn’t sound like anything he wouldn’t have said before he had realised he had a massive crush, or anything he wouldn’t say to someone he _didn’t_ have a massive crush on, for that matter, so… It was fine.

He got a reply an hour or so later, when the early sunset of the November evening was starting to make the outside into a twilight world and the inside of his little café, filled with warm yellow light and his lovingly chosen wallpaper and art, was feeling extra homely and cozy.

_Geralt (Saturday, 4:39pm)_

_Journey was fine. Boring. Don’t worry about me. I’m always careful._

_This is my room at the bed and breakfast I’m staying in tonight. [image attached]_

_I like it but I also don’t like it?_

Jaskier laughed out loud at the confused sounding message and studied the picture carefully. He kind of got what Geralt meant, actually. From what he could see of the room, it was warm and welcoming, cozy in the same way he was feeling cozy right now, perfect for a stay when it was cold outside, but it was also somewhat… overwhelming. The visible walls were covered in wallpaper, warm terracotta and cream, but the floral print was so big and dense that it was bordering on oppressive. There were dark wooden bedside tables on each side of the bed, each with a lamp on and a couple of china figurines of dogs, which looked sweet on first glance but rather manic on second. The pillows looked soft and comfy but there was a literal mountain of them, and there was almost certainly no way to sleep on that bed without taking basically all of them and piling them up somewhere else. The quilt thrown over the foot of the bed looked old and handmade, and-

_Jaskier (Saturday 4:41pm)_

_OMFG geralt you absolutely have to steal that quilt immediately. well when you leave I guess_

The quilt was made up of blocks with various horse designs – running horses, rampant horses, giant horse heads… The fabrics were in tasteful colours, greens and browns, and much like Geralt felt about the room, Jaskier both loved it and didn’t like it at all. Either way, he felt Geralt ought to have it in his life.

_Jaskier (Saturday, 4:42pm)_

_don’t tell me it isn’t perfectly you? you love horses! you told me so yourself, that they’re your favourite animals and you wished you had more time to go riding_

_Geralt (Saturday, 4:46pm)_

_What the fuck is it with you and stealing? I’m not stealing it._

_Although I do actually quite like it. There’s also this guy. [image attached]_

This time the picture was a close-up of a little horse figurine on a shelf on a different wall. Like the dog ornaments, it looked cheap and slightly strange, but cute in its own way.

Jaskier decided then and there that it would be his life’s mission to acquire horse-themed presents for Geralt, assuming they were going to become close enough friends that he would see him in person and therefore be able to give them to him.

He spent the next quarter of an hour or so dealing with a couple of customers, likely the last for the day, and when he checked his phone a little later he had one more message from Geralt.

_Geralt (Saturday, 4:48pm)_

_I’m heading out now. Have a good evening._

His heart twisted suddenly with fear for the other man, and it took him by surprise. He sat down heavily at the small corner table they had shared hours ago and frowned at his phone as if it was its fault Geralt was venturing out into danger. He was a witcher, probably one of the most capable and powerful people in the entire world, and it hadn’t occurred to Jaskier before now to really worry about him. He had definitely had contracts over the couple of weeks they had known each other, and he hadn’t worried about those… It had to be because Geralt hadn’t really mentioned those til after the fact, whereas this time it was so _immediate_. Geralt was hunting a monster, _right this second_ , somewhere hours away from home (assuming his home was somewhere around here). As immensely well prepared and capable as they were, Jaskier knew perfectly well that witchers died during their hunts – it wasn’t even unusual. He couldn’t get the image of Geralt as he had first seen him out of his head: bleeding everywhere, unable to walk any further, filthy and cold and alone with no-one to help him…

He felt slightly numb as he closed up the café, glad that he hadn’t had any last-minute customers, though he would usually welcome them and cheerfully keep the place open late.

Faster healing, he kept reminding himself as he cleaned the coffee machine. Geralt had said it himself, he had never been in danger of actually dying that night – he had just looked like it.

Faster healing. Insane speed and physical strength. Years upon years of brutal training. Years of _experience_. Offensive spells. He repeated these things to himself in time with his broom as he swept the floor, a list of all the things that witchers had on their side in fights against monsters.

He spent the evening watching telly in his little flat above the café, and when he lost his ability to concentrate on that, half-heartedly strumming at his guitar to calm himself down. It wasn’t necessary to worry like this, he knew. Heading out alone at night to battle something supernatural and presumably terrifying was literally just a day’s work to a witcher. Geralt had shown no sign of fear or doubt that he would be successful. He had assured him that he was “always careful”, and even specifically told him not to worry.

Gods above, if this was how it was going to feel every time Geralt went to do the actual witchering part of being a witcher, being his friend was going to be taxing on Jaskier’s nerves, to say the least.

He reached for his phone what felt like every two minutes all evening, fighting with himself over whether or not to send Geralt a message, just ask him to let him know when he finished the job and got back safe and sound. Just to put his mind at ease.

He didn’t want it to seem like he hadn’t listened to Geralt when he’d said not to worry, or believed him when he’d said he would be careful. He didn’t want it to seem like he didn’t have faith in his abilities. He was almost certain Geralt was not the sort of person who would appreciate being pestered about his safety every time he did anything; he would probably just find it annoying and silly.

Still, the temptation to text him came and went all night, and Jaskier never quite a hundred percent made up his mind _not_ to… But eventually he fell asleep on the sofa, the telly back on again and a lumpy old cushion as a pillow, without having sent a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! All 28 of you! Destiny decreed that you would interact with what is, ultimately, a very personal feel-good writing project, so I guess we're linked forever now, so... Enjoy that. *aggressively hopes for your safety and happiness over long distances*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier hears from Geralt and does some research into the supernatural.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahaha, here I am again! What's it been this time, three weeks? Excuse the slowed down schedule, but I'm currently working on chapter six and it is taking me My Entire Human Life, so I'm trying to create myself a bit of extra time... I'm hoping that writing the next chapter won't be quite so remarkably like getting blood from a stone 🖊️😖🥺
> 
> This chapter was created by taking the Netflix show and the previously prepared coffee shop universe and mixing in a healthy tablespoon of info about monsters, signs etc. from Witcher 3! (PS - consistent chapter length? What is?)

Jaskier woke up feeling slightly uncomfortable and very confused. It took him a moment to realise this was just his own living room. The telly and the main lamp he used were both on, and he hadn’t even managed to pull a blanket over himself before he fell asleep, so he was more than a little chilly. Why hadn’t he just… gone to bed? Wait. Hadn’t he been worrying about something? And he had just been thinking of texting…

Geralt! He had been fretting about Geralt, who had gone out after some monster or other this evening – possibly last night, now. He’d been wondering whether the witcher would mind too terribly if he texted just to ask him to check in with him once he was safely done with the job, but as far as he remembered he hadn’t.

He sat up, dazed by the lights and headachey, and looked around for his phone, eventually finding it had fallen onto the carpet while he was asleep. He only wanted it to check the time, and was extremely surprised to find that in fact _Geralt_ had texted _him_.

_Geralt (Saturday, 11:53pm)_

_Hi Jaskier, I’m sorry to message you so late at night, but I had the feeling you would be worrying about me. Might be silly but I wanted to let you know I’m safe. Geralt 1 – Wraith 0._

Jaskier quickly looked at the time at the top of the screen. It was nearly quarter to three in the morning. Geralt had sent that message hours ago, and was surely asleep by now – assuming witchers got tired like the less superhumanly mutated portion of the population. Jaskier could just imagine him under that weird but kind of charming horse quilt, surrounded by too many pillows, peacefully sleeping off his monster fight, heedless of the wind howling outside and the raindrops hitting the window… (He had no way of knowing what the weather was like wherever Geralt was, of course, but it made an already cozy mental pictures even cozier to assume it was a dark and stormy night.) He wondered whether Geralt tied his hair back to sleep. Maybe he took it all down and left it loose overnight, that would probably be more comfortable. Both times Jaskier had seen him, he had had it half tied back, and that style was extremely flattering on him, though admittedly the second time it had looked a lot nicer than the first.

Then he wondered what kind of pajamas Geralt had. If he had any pajamas – they seemed such a mundane thing for a witcher to have. Maybe he just slept in his clothes, but maybe…

No, Jaskier told himself sternly, he had no right to be trying to imagine any of this. He would just text Geralt back – if he was asleep he could just read it in the morning – and then, finally, go to bed.

_Jaskier (Sunday, 2:42am)_

_hi Geralt! thanks for letting me know, I was a bit worried, even though you said not to be_

_Jaskier (Sunday, 2:43am)_

_actually tbh I was quite a lot worried, I thought about texting you to ask you to text me when you got back safe, but I didn’t want to bother you. so if you were being silly, I was also being silly (but it’s not at all)_

_going to bed now, hope you’re sleeping well (under your new horse quilt)_

When he woke up again, in his own bed and no longer wearing yesterday’s clothes, Jaskier was tired (and very grateful to past Jaskier for deciding the Buttercup Café could open later and close earlier than usual on a Sunday) but in a definite good mood. Geralt was safe and sound – well of course he was – and messaging him to reassure him he was fine was such a sweet, thoughtful gesture that Jaskier now liked him even more than he already had. And, worth a few bonus good mood points, Geralt had sent him another text in the more reasonable (but still early) hours of the morning.

_Geralt (Sunday, 6:35am)_

_You were up late last night, I hope you won’t be too tired when you’re opening up the coffee shop this morning._

_Jaskier (Sunday, 8:09am)_

_if you’re worried I was up worrying about you, don’t worry! I wasn’t, I just fell asleep in an uncomfortable position and 3am was when my body noticed and decided to do something about it_

_also I don’t open til ten today! plenty of time for being lazy! yay!_

He did just that, letting himself fall back to sleep (or rather into an incredibly comfortable doze that was almost sleep and also better than it) for another half hour before getting up, enjoying a huge mug of hot, strong tea and some toast in his pajamas and listening to the radio. He took his time under a luxuriously hot shower, shivering uncomfortably when he got out and telling himself it was definitely time to start putting the heating on now, and didn’t hurry as he dressed himself in his oldest, most comfy jeans and a big, slightly shapeless dark red knitted jumper. It had been made for him many years ago by his oldest friend Priscilla; she was really not that good at knitting, but he loved it anyway. It made him feel cozy on the outside and on the inside. He would be seeing her in just over a week now, which he was extremely happy about, and it was that as much as the cold weather that made him pick out the jumper.

Despite his lack of effort to do anything quickly, he was downstairs in plenty of time to switch everything on, put all the cakes and scones and so on out in the cabinet and generally make the place look welcoming and ready to go before unlocking the door just before ten.

He was expecting a quiet day, to be honest, possibly _very_ quiet – and he got it. Enough customers came in to make it worth his while opening, but only just. Well, _financially_ only just; his place really was still so new that just by being open and letting people come in and (hopefully) enjoy what he had on offer, he was spreading awareness of its existence, building up towards busier days (even Sundays) in the future. At least he hoped so.

He spent the ample time he had between serving people reading the book he was currently keeping behind the counter for these quieter days (a falling-apart book about Celtic myths and legends his sister had given him as a kid) and browsing the internet. At first fully intent on keeping his promise to himself to buy Geralt horse-themed gifts, he did a bit of speculative online shopping, before talking himself out of the whole idea, suddenly certain that if the witcher didn’t yet think he was weird in his extreme enthusiasm for their fledgling friendship, giving him a present would make sure he absolutely did. Jaskier accepted that some people found him strange, embraced it, in fact, but he didn’t want to put Geralt off with the wrong kind of strangeness.

Putting cheesy gifts with horses on to the back of his mind didn’t stop him from thinking about Geralt, of course, and eventually he found himself considering what Geralt had texted him in the middle of the night. His heart jumped a little every time he thought of the fact that Geralt had bothered to send a message just to reassure him, that he had been _thinking_ about him, but he had also sent “Geralt 1 – Wraith 0”.

Jaskier wasn’t really sure what a wraith was, but it rang a bell as something he’d heard of at some point. Was it maybe just another name for a ghost? This led him down an internet rabbit hole and into a maze of wikipedia pages about spectres, of which wraiths turned out to be just one type, then sub-types of wraith, and then examples of particular wraith hauntings, and then people believed to have become wraiths, and _then_ people known to have fought wraiths (mostly witchers, but also a few sorceresses and mages and, allegedly, one determined and extremely lucky milkmaid three hundred and forty seven years ago in Scotland) and _then_ , Melitele’s fucking eyeballs, _witchers known to have been killed fighting wraiths,_ a list of links that was concerningly long…

“That’s enough of that for one day,” Jaskier said out loud to himself, slamming his phone down slightly too hard and earning confused but friendly looks from the two customers he had at that point (two adorable, almost stereotypical old ladies who were knitting away and chatting happily between sips of tea and bits of scone). Geralt was not going to be added to that list. He was fine, and had been fine for… well, for however many years he had been witchering. And not all witchers died to the things they hunted, right? Some of them got old – really, _really_ old – and retired. Most of them, probably. Yeah.

Really considering the darker and more frightening realities of the world, which he had never done quite as much as he was doing now he knew someone who faced them on a daily basis and who might actually one day die for his trouble, was an extremely stressful business. However, Jaskier also found it utterly fascinating. Once he’d made himself a strong, reviving coffee with pumpkin syrup (it was the season, after all, and the trend for pumpkin spice everything was one he would defend to his own _,_ much less heroic death) he picked up his phone again.

_Jaskier (Sunday, 12:44pm)_

_hey so I looked up wraiths… they are so scary! much creepier than I imagined, very cool, like right out of a horror film, but not a blood and guts kind of chop you up horror film, one with ghosts_

_(obviously. please excuse that last sentence where I sounded like a complete dunce)_

_was it a particular type? were you scared? do you ever get scared? how did you kill it?_

_Jaskier (Sunday, 12:49pm)_

_btw how are you feeling? are you tired? what are you doing with your sunday?_

_Geralt (Sunday, 1:10pm)_

_That was a lot of fucking questions._

_Out of interest, which do you prefer, asking questions or stealing things?_

_Jaskier (Sunday, 1:12pm)_

_LOL well my number one favourite thing is obviously asking questions about stealing things…_

_Geralt (Sunday, 1:15pm)_

_There were two of them, pretty standard wraiths. I wasn’t scared. I get scared sometimes, but I don’t let it affect me. We’re trained like that. Killed it with silver._

_Jaskier (Sunday, 1:16pm)_

_killed it with silver? really, that’s all you’re going to tell me? literally the only thing I already knew?_

_Geralt (Sunday, 1:19pm)_

_I’m feeling fine. Not tired, I slept well, and I don’t need that much sleep to begin with. Not doing anything much, just the journey home._

_Geralt (Sunday, 1:21pm)_

_I honestly don’t know what you want me to say. It wasn’t some epic battle or something. It never is – just trying to kill the thing before the thing kills you. I think your idea of what monsters are like and what fighting them is like is romanticized and highly inaccurate. No monsters are cool, stay away from them._

_Geralt (Sunday, 1:24pm)_

_If you’re really interested, look up the witcher sign yrden. I used that._

_Jaskier (Sunday, 1:38pm)_

_I’m sorry Geralt, I didn’t mean to make light of what you do, though I realise you’re right and I may have been romanticizing it somewhat. I’m just honestly interested. and don’t worry, if I’m ever anywhere near a monster of any kind it will NOT be on purpose, believe me J x_

_Geralt (Sunday, 1:44pm)_

_It’s fine. I’m not offended or anything. It’s just not as interesting as you seem to think. Wouldn’t make for good stories._

_Jaskier (Sunday, 1:45pm)_

_oh good, I’m glad I didn’t offend you! (that sentence looks/sounds sarcastic no matter which way I look at it, but I mean it sincerely)_

_:)_

_Jaskier (Saturday, 1:46pm)_

_also glad because I assume it means I can tell you without fear of reprisal that I saw a youtube video of a witcher using that sign, and it looked COOL AS FUCK (even though I now know that despite appearances, it’s actually super NOT cool and extremely boring)_

_Geralt (Sunday, 1:50pm)_

_You make me laugh!_

This simple text might have been the absolute best one Jaskier had ever received from Geralt. He had got to hear his laugh yesterday, but knowing it hadn’t been a fluke, he was actually capable of making the seemingly serious man laugh (even if it was most likely _at_ him) felt good. Really good. He wanted to do that for Geralt, wanted to _be_ that for him – and maybe if he could be, he would get to hear him laugh again sometime soon. He wanted that as well, though he hadn’t thought specifically about it til this moment.

He spent the rest of the day feeling thrilled to bits, while also trying hard to think about witchers and monster fights the way Geralt would clearly like him to: boring. Just a job. Not epic. Not romantic. What else had he said? Oh, not “story-worthy”. (Jaskier hadn’t told him that he would like to write about him, but clearly he was giving off that kind of vibe anyway.) However much he tried, though, he couldn’t quite get rid of the notion of Geralt as this heroic figure, strong and solitary and brave, his worth and that of all witchers somehow going unnoticed by the people who owed them their safety - many of them their lives. He continued to try, hard, realizing that it was probably an insult to the real work witchers did to imagine them as leads in some story, and disrespectful to the victims of supernatural creatures to think they were kind of cool instead of just plain dangerous.

 _Boring, unheroic, doing their job,_ he reminded himself whenever he started getting wistful and forming dramatic mental images – Geralt locked in battle with a dragon that was surely more terrifyingly large even than real ones; Geralt silhouetted against a sunset, alone and far from civilization, two swords standing, points in the ground, beside him; Geralt with another witcher (one who had far less clear features but was definitely far less beautiful and generally valiant-looking), back to back, surrounded by a horde of shapeless, shadowy creatures… _Boring, unheroic, doing their job_ , he said to himself again.

It wasn’t like making coffee and cleaning tables though, was it? Jaskier wanted to be more respectful, and was absolutely determined to do so, but he was also a hundred percent sure Geralt was wrong about not being story material. Jaskier’s life… well, okay, he _could_ write a song or a story or even a poem about it, but it would be nowhere near as captivating or meaningful…

Eventually, he managed to stop daydreaming about romantic tales of inhumanly beautiful monster hunters and the awe-inspiring creatures they fought by thinking up increasingly ludicrous ideas for overwrought songs about his own life instead.

The afternoon continued to be quiet but relatively steady in terms of the café doing business. Jaskier wasted a lot of good coffee on himself that he could have saved for customers, and ate his way through nearly as many scones and pieces of cake as he sold (though only the ones that were slightly less fresh and would need to be replaced for tomorrow anyway – he had a long evening of baking ahead of him, which was part of the reason why he closed the café at four on a Sunday). As he sent a father and his child off home with a couple of extra bits of free shortbread (also not fresh but still perfectly good to eat), locked the door and started to clean up, he considered his life a year ago, even half a year ago. Even _three months_ ago, when the worst of it was over and he was starting to actually make the Buttercup Café a reality, he couldn’t have imagined he would be quite as happy and contented as he felt at that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I just want to say thanks again if you're reading this! ☕🍰🎸⚔️🐺 This fic means a lot to me, dumb as it is, and I'm really happy that some people out there are getting enjoyment out of it too 🥰💚💙💜☕🍰


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